I had a primary NTFS partition with windows 7 installed on it. Somehow, its bootloader went corrupt so I used install-mbr in ubuntu to fix that but it only made the problem worse. Now my system didn’t recognise the partition as NTFS partition and I couldn’t access the partition.
I modified the partition ID using fdisk but that didn’t work. Fdisk recognised it as NTFS but gparted didn’t, nor did Ubuntu. To fix it, I followed the following steps:
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- Download
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- and extract the files to a folder. The files are compiled executable files so there is no need for any installation. I extracted it in a folder named testdisk on my home directory. Ubuntu users can install it using
sudo apt-get install testdisk
cd ~/testdisk/linux
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- Execute the testdisk:
sudo ./testdisk_static
- Select [Create] and press enter. On the resulting screen, select your harddrive using cursor keys and press enter. On the next screen select the partition table type. It’d generally be Intel if you are using a PC and Mac if you are on Mac. Select the correct one and press enter.
- Now you’ll be presented with lots of options. Use cursor keys to select Advanced and press enter. Select the partition which shows unknown type. Use left and right arrow keys to select [Type] and press enter. You’ll see the list of partition types. In the list the HPFS/NTFS has partition id 07. Press enter, type 7 for NTFS or another partition ID corresponding to your partition type. Press enter.
- Now use the right arrow key to select the [Boot] and press enter. Use right arrow key to select [Rebuild BS] and press enter. Select [Write] and press enter. Now type y. The partition should be fixed by now. You can now quit the testdisk
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- Refresh partition list
sudo partprobe
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The disk should be accessible again now
Cheers!